Old and New Masters eBook

When we, as strangers, sought
Their catering
care,
Veiled smiles bespoke their
thought
Of what we were.

They warmed as they opined
Us more than friends—­
That we had all resigned
For love’s
dear ends.

“Catering care” is an appalling phrase.

I do not wish to over-emphasize the significance of
flaws of this kind. But, at a time when all the
world is eager to do honour to Mr. Hardy’s poems,
it is surely well to refrain from doing equal honour
to his faults. We shall not appreciate the splendid
interpretation of earth in The Return of the Native
more highly for persuading ourselves that:—­

Intermissive aim at the thing
sufficeth,

is a line of good poetry. Similarly the critic,
if he is to enjoy the best of Mr. Hardy, must also
be resolute not to shut his eyes to the worst in such
a verse as that with which A Broken Appointment
begins:—­

You did not come,
And marching time drew on,
and wore me numb,—­
Yet less for loss of your
dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking
in your make
That high compassion which
can overbear
Reluctance for pure loving
kindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour
stroked its sum,
You did not come.

There are hints of the grand style of lyric poetry
in these lines, but phrases like “in your make”
and “as the hope-hour stroked its sum”
are discords that bring it tumbling to the levels
of Victorian commonplace.

What one does bless Mr. Hardy for, however, both in
his verse and in his prose, is his bleak sincerity.
He writes out of the reality of his experience.
He has a temperament sensitive beyond that of all but
a few recent writers to the pain and passion of human
beings. Especially is he sensitive to the pain
and passion of frustrated lovers. At least half
his poems, I fancy, are poems of frustration.
And they, hold us under the spell of reality like
a tragedy in a neighbour’s house, even when
they leave us most mournful over the emptiness of the
world. One can see how very mournful Mr. Hardy’s
genius is if one compares it with that of Browning,
his master in the art of the dramatic lyric. Browning
is also a poet of frustrated lovers. One can
remember poem after poem of his with a theme that
might easily have served for Mr. Hardy—­Too
Late, Cristina, The Lost Mistress, The Last Ride Together,
The Statue and the Bust, to name a few. But
what a sense of triumph there is in Browning’s
tragedies! Even when he writes of the feeble-hearted,
as in The Statue and the Bust, he leaves us
with the feeling that we are in the presence of weakness
in a world in which courage prevails. His world
is a place of opulence, not of poverty. Compare
The Last Ride Together with Mr. Hardy’s
The Phantom Horsewoman, and you will see a vast
energy and beauty issuing from loss in the one, while
in the other there is little but a sad shadow.
To have loved even for an hour is with Browning to
live for ever after in the inheritance of a mighty
achievement. To have loved for an hour is, in
Mr. Hardy’s imagination, to have deepened the
sadness even more than the beauty of one’s memories.